I’ve done it so many times: stood by the kettle, blinky-eyed with sleep, impatient for my first coffee. I grab the overfull kettle the second the mechanism flicks its little tongue up at peak boil. As I tip it towards my cafetiere, an enthusiasm of still-boiling water leaps and jerks from the spout, splashing the countertop and my pyjama-bare feet, lightly scalding me for my hastiness.
I know this will happen. I know that if I fill the kettle too full, and pour it too soon, it’ll splash me with roiling displeasure. And yet I do it again, keen to maximise the heat and volume, so I can pre-heat my cafetiere before I make the real thing. Good heavens, I couldn’t face filling the kettle twice (yes, it’s a big cafetiere), or risk even a moment of evaporative heat loss by waiting for its molecular disco to settle!
You may wonder why I’m confessing to recklessly flouting the fill-line and tipping my kettle before it’s safe.
Well, it struck me recently how often we try to pour before our emotional kettle has settled, scalding ourselves (and others) because it’s still mid-churn, surging up, geyser-like, through our inner spouts.
Only a fortnight ago, I found myself shouting at my host’s little puppy: an adorable, Andrex-cute Labrador who was pawing at me in playful enthusiasm. I’d usually be thrilled. But this time (I belatedly realised), I’d overdone things: pushed a bit too hard in the gym, tried to juggle multiple lines of work, socialised more than usual and had too little sleep. And now I was furiously trying to meet a work deadline, taught with tension.
Meanwhile, cute-as-a-button puppy just wanted to play. And in my frustration, I let a mean-spirited shout spill out and scorch her. She retreated quietly to her crate, head down and tail between her legs.
I burned with shame.
I’d overfilled my kettle and poured it while it still boiled. I wasn’t wicked; I’d just been overfull and too quick to act. Instead of sitting with what was boiling up in me, I’d poured it all over a puppy.
My mentor Julia calls it ‘Pressing Pause’ – taking a moment to breathe and turn inwards instead of emotionally hot-vomiting all over somebody else. Not to suppress it or pretend it isn’t there, but to take responsibility for what’s erupting before it spills where it doesn’t belong.
And to ask: ‘Why did the kettle boil over in the first place?’
Which leaves me three questions worth asking next time I’m tempted to pour:
Is my kettle overfull?
Can I decant a little?
And if not, can I at least let the poor thing settle?!
